AJ Jacobs: My colossal task burden | Life and style | The Guardian:

Part of the reason evolution developed vocalizing was to hone our attention. It helps balance your emotions. The very act of saying, “I’m angry” makes you less angry. It lights up the language centers in the brain, which are in the more evolved cerebral cortex, which allows you to control yourself better. It tips you off to warped thinking, too.

(Via kottke.org.)

Y Combinator: Elementary Worldly Wisdom:

[Carl Braun] had [a] rule, from psychology, which, if you’re interested in wisdom, ought to be part of your repertoire — like the elementary mathematics of permutations and combinations.

His rule for all the Braun Company’s communications was called the five W’s — you had to tell who was going to do what, where, when and why. And if you wrote a letter or directive in the Braun Company telling somebody to do something, and you didn’t tell him why, you could get fired. In fact, you would get fired if you did it twice.

You might ask why that is so important? Well, again that’s a rule of psychology. Just as you think better if you array knowledge on a bunch of models that are basically answers to the question, why, why, why, if you always tell people why, they’ll understand it better, they’ll consider it more important, and they’ll be more likely to comply. Even if they don’t understand your reason, they’ll be more likely to comply.

So there’s an iron rule that just as you want to start getting worldly wisdom by asking why, why, why, in communicating with other people about everything, you want to include why, why, why. Even if it’s obvious, it’s wise to stick in the why.

(Via kottke.org.)

Charrette – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

The word charrette may refer to any collaborative session in which a group of designers drafts a solution to a design problem. While the structure of a charrette varies, depending on the design problem and the individuals in the group, charrettes often take place in multiple sessions in which the group divides into sub-groups. Each sub-group then presents its work to the full group as material for future dialogue. Such charrettes serve as a way of quickly generating a design solution while integrating the aptitudes and interests of a diverse group of people.

(Via Seth’s Blog.)

Making Time to Make: Bad Correspondence | 43 Folders:

Over the years, novelist Neal Stephenson, has had at least a couple different pages where he’s explained why he’s chosen to limit the access he provides via email, interviews, and phone calls. It appears to be something he’s given a lot of thought to…

Writing novels is hard, and requires vast, unbroken slabs of time. Four quiet hours is a resource that I can put to good use. Two slabs of time, each two hours long, might add up to the same four hours, but are not nearly as productive as an unbroken four. If I know that I am going to be interrupted, I can’t concentrate, and if I suspect that I might be interrupted, I can’t do anything at all. Likewise, several consecutive days with four-hour time-slabs in them give me a stretch of time in which I can write a decent book chapter, but the same number of hours spread out across a few weeks, with interruptions in between them, are nearly useless…

I am not proud of the fact that some of my e-mail goes unanswered as a result. It is never my intention to be rude or to give well-meaning readers the cold shoulder. If I were a commercial best-seller, I would have enough money to hire a staff to look after my correspondence. As it is, my books are bought by enough people to provide me with a sort of middle-class lifestyle, but not enough to hire employees, and so I am faced with a stark choice between being a bad correspondent and being a good novelist. I am trying to be a good novelist, and hoping that people will forgive me for being a bad correspondent.

Is it any different in your profession?

(Via marco.org.)

the tao of productivity | Zen Habits:

Success is something that’s ingrained in our culture, and almost every moment of our childhoods and schooling are geared towards success. But it’s a hollow concept. Who defines success? Why is it so important? What happens when we don’t achieve it? And what happens when we do, and still want more, or realize it wasn’t worth all the effort, and that we’ve wasted our lives?

Keep your feet on the ground. Find balance, and contentment. Forget about “success.”

(Via @smashingmag.)

Rampaging cannonball star is rampaging | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine:

Y’know, there are days I have a hard time getting out of bed. The humdrum routine of the day yawns ahead of me… but every now and again, as I lie there mustering up the courage to throw off the blanket and face the world, I get a glimmer that maybe today the Universe will once again refill my tank, make me look above and outside me, and remind me that truly, the place is full of awesome.

(Via kottke.org.)

Seth’s Blog: Arrogant:

Better, they say, to be invisible and non-contributing than risk being arrogant. That feels like a selfish, cowardly cop out to me. Better, I think, to make a difference and run the risk of failing sometimes, of being made fun of, and yes, appearing arrogant.

Apple Human Interface Guidelines: The Design Process:

When making design decisions regarding features in your application, it’s important to weigh the costs, not all of which are financial, against the potential benefits. Every time you add a feature to your application, the following things can happen:

• Your application gets larger.
• Your application gets slower.
• Your application’s human interface becomes more complex.
• You spend time developing new features rather than refining existing features.
• Your application’s documentation and help become more extensive.
• You run the risk of introducing changes that could adversely affect existing features.
• You increase the time required to validate the behavior of your application.

Choosing appropriate features and devoting the needed resources to implement them correctly can save you time and effort later. Choosing poor feature sets or failing to assign appropriate design, engineering, testing, and documentation resources often incurs heavier costs later when critical bugs appear or users can’t figure out how to use your product.

The Collapse of Complex Business Models « Clay Shirky:

When ecosystems change and inflexible institutions collapse, their members disperse, abandoning old beliefs, trying new things, making their living in different ways than they used to. It’s easy to see the ways in which collapse to simplicity wrecks the glories of old. But there is one compensating advantage for the people who escape the old system: when the ecosystem stops rewarding complexity, it is the people who figure out how to work simply in the present, rather than the people who mastered the complexities of the past, who get to say what happens in the future.

(Via Duncan’s Journal.)